Current location in this text. Enter a Perseus citation to go to another section or work. Full search
options are on the right side and top of the page.

This disaster was not forgotten when a
furious conflagration damaged the capital to an unusual extent, reducing Mount Cælius to ashes. "It was an ill-starred
year," people began to say, "and the emperor's purpose of leaving Rome must have been formed under evil omens." They began
in vulgar fashion to trace ill-luck to guilt, when Tiberius checked them by
distributing money in proportion to losses sustained. He received a vote of
thanks in the Senate from its distinguished members, and was applauded by
the populace for having assisted with his liberality, without partiality or
the solicitations of friends, strangers whom he had himself sought out. And
proposals were also made that Mount Cælius
should for the future be called Mount Augustus,
inasmuch as when all around was in flames only a single statue of Tiberius
in the house of one Junius, a senator, had remained uninjured. This, it was
said, had formerly happened to Claudia Quinta; her statue, which had twice
escaped the violence of fire, had been dedicated by our ancestors in the
temple of the Mother of Gods; hence the Claudii had been accounted sacred
and numbered among deities, and so additional sanctity ought to be given to
a spot where heaven showed such honour to the emperor.